Francis Bacon Quotes

For the chain of causes cannot by any force be loosed or broken, nor can nature be commanded except by being obeyed.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

Be so true to thyself, as thou be not false to others.

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

Nothing is to be feared but fear.

That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.

Let no one think or maintain that a person can search too far or be too well studied in either the book of God's word or the book of God's works.

Mark what a generosity and courage (a dog) will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man, who to him is instead of a God

There is a cunning which we in England call the rning of the cat in the pan.

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.

It is the wisdom of the crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice.

My painting is not violent, it's life that is violent. Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves, the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life. We are born with a scream; we come into life with a scream and maybe love is a mosquito net between the fear of living and the fear of death.

If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.

The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds. And though there be many things in nature which are singular and unmatched, yet it devises for them parallels and conjugates and relatives which do not exist. Hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles, spirals and dragons being (except in name) utterly rejected.

Great Hypocrites are the real atheists.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

Learning hath his infancy, when it is but beginning and almost childish; then his youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile; then his strength of years, when it is solid and reduced; and lastly his old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust.

For there is a great difference in delivery of the mathematics , which are the most abstracted of knowledges, and policy , which is the most immersed. And howsoever contention hath been moved , touching a uniformity of method in multiformity of matter, yet we see how that opinion, besides the weakness of it, hath been of ill desert towards learning, as that which taketh the way to reduce learning to certain empty and barren generalities; being but the very husks and shells of sciences, all the kernel being forced out and expulsed with the torture and press of the method.

The human understanding of its own nature is prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds.

They are the best physicians, who being great in learning most incline to the traditions of experience, or being distinguished in practice do not reflect the methods and generalities of art.

Truth is a naked and open daylight, that does not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. . . A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure

He that cannot possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another's.

First therefore let us seek the dignity of knowledge in the archetype or first platform, which is in the attributes and acts of God, as far as they are revealed to man and may be observed with sobriety; wherein we may not seek it by the name of Learning; for all Learning is Knowledge acquired, and all Knowledge in God is original: and therefore we must look for it by another name, that of Wisdom or Sapience, as the Scriptures call it.

We rise to great heights by a winding staircase of small steps.

Friends are thieves of time.

Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.

I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don't in fact know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do.

In things that are tender and unpleasing, it is good to break the ice by some one whose words are of less weight, and to reserve the more weighty voice to come in as by chance.

I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

The breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air than in the hand.

Every person born in the USA is endowed with life, liberty, and a substantial share of the national debt.

Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.

The End of our Foundation is the knowledge of Causes; and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.

Do not wonder if the common people speak more truly than those above them: they speak more safely.

The human understanding is unquiet; it cannot stop or rest, and still presses onward, but in vain. Therefore it is that we cannot conceive of any end or limit to the world, but always as of necessity it occurs to us that there is something beyond... But he is no less an unskilled and shallow philosopher who seeks causes of that which is most general, than he who in things subordinate and subaltern omits to do so

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

In Philosophy, the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumferred to Nature, or are reflected and reverted upon himself. Out of which several inquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine Philosophy, Natural Philosophy, and Human Philosophy or Humanity. For all things are marked and stamped with this triple character of the power of God, the difference of Nature and the use of Man.

the serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.

All good moral philosophy is ... but the handmaid to religion.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

There is nothing more certain in nature than that it is impossible for any body to be utterly annihilated.

Chiefly the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands.

There was never law, or sect, or opinion did so much magnify goodness, as the Christian religion doth.

The true bounds and limitations, whereby human knowledge is confined and circumscribed,... are three: the first, that we do not so place our felicity in knowledge, as we forget our mortality: the second, that we make application of our knowledge, to give ourselves repose and contentment, and not distates or repining: the third, that we do not presume by the contemplation of Nature to attain to the mysteries of God.